Buying soap is a minefield for me- one filled with hives and puffy skin and itchy reactions to drive you mad. If you haven’t figured it out yet, and aren’t completely grossed out, and yes, decided to keep reading, I have sensitive skin. REALLY sensitive skin. I am a natural redhead and unfortunately this is not an uncommon part of that package. I love being a redhead- it’s just a little frustrating when buying what should be a no-brainer, everyday product. Chalk it up to the American body care industry’s drive to put more cheap (translation: irritating) fragrance and cleansing ingredients into their body care products, for what I deduce is to reduce costs and increase profits. Which for most is not an issue. And I while I would like nothing more than to buy one of these gorgeously scented, silky creations that feel like a creamy dream in the shower, they have me frantically itching like a dog with fleas within an hour of using them. (Oh yeah, I’m THAT sexy. Oh baby, turn me ON.) And this lovely allergic reaction can intensify for days. In short, years of sensitivity has turned me into a research scientist when I look at ingredient lists. A soap savant if you will. Which has led me to try every unscented product on the market. Some are good, some are not, and I eventually found a few that worked fairly well.
I Miss The Wonderful Smells
The only problem was that I missed, well, smelling GOOD. Not smelling like freshly melted plastic toys (mmmm- singed Barbie hair). Any fellow unscented product buyer knows what I am talking about. You get all excited reading the label thinking, GREAT! Finally! I have found the ONE! (Some search for the perfect mate, me for the perfect soap. Yes, this quest lasts a lifetime- my own personal Holy Grail. And I’m kinda serious. Oh what a sad, sad little sensitive life I lead…) So you open it up to smell said product, and you’re met with that god awful plastic smell from Dante’s fourth level of hell. But then you think, well, it can’t be THAT bad. The smell will go away after a few minutes, right?? (When, when WHEN- will I ever learn? Sigh. Like a sucker at a county fair Sam I am, I’ll win that prize, I will!) So you go ahead and try it out, with great hopes. Great, foolish idiotic hopes because you know better. You know what lies ahead. And. The. Smell. Does. NOT. GO. AWAY. And while you may not itch, you’re thinking that THIS is just as bad, and back to the store you go with crumpled receipt in hand (because you were convinced this was the ONE, and you threw out the receipt and had to go digging around in the trash can to find it. One more humiliation to add to the list).
Pre De Provence Soap
Which brings me to my latest venture into the great surfactant wilderness: Pre de Provence triple-milled Milk scented soap (Triple-milled means it doesn’t dissolve into (very expensive) goo once you set it down. It actually lasts *Gasp* a long time. Who knew such a thing existed?). The scent doesn’t linger, but I’d much rather have this, as opposed to a smell so powerfully strong that it screams to everyone within a hundred yard radius (and maybe beyond): HEY!! HEY EVERYBODY!! I SMELL LIKE CUCUMBER MINT JASMINE HYACINTH SANDALWOOD JOLLY RANCHER CHERRY CHEESE POPCORN BOOGER EAR WAX AND ISN’T IT AMAZING AND DON’T I SMELL GOOD!! OMG SMELL ME!!!! Meanwhile, everyone around you and on the next block is gagging from your pretty, pretty smell. (A little HP Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans reference crept in there but you get the point.) So after trying out my new soap for a week- without allergic incident and cautiously hopeful- I absent-mindedly touched my arm and realized it was incredibly silky. Not that I have scaly gator skin to begin with- I may have been a woman without soapy scent, but I did require they leave me touchably soft. But this was a whole ‘nother level. Baby soft. Then I realized why. Cue the Oh Happy Day song a la Sister Act II.
A Good Soap
While good soap can’t change the world, it can give a few quiet moments of respite from the outside world. It can wrap you in copious, creamy clouds of richly scented lather, a bubble of warm steam and hot water, in a world that doesn’t exist beyond the bath. And if you bathe at night as I do, off to sleep you go, with the warm smell of comfort cocooning you in your burrow of blankets, drowsy and drifting into dreams.
While good soap can’t change the world, it can give a few quiet moments of respite from the outside world. It can wrap you in copious, creamy clouds of richly scented lather, a bubble of warm steam and hot water, in a world that doesn’t exist beyond the bath. And if you bathe at night as I do, off to sleep you go, with the warm smell of comfort cocooning you in your burrow of blankets, drowsy and drifting into dreams.
And that, my sensitive friends, and all you curious non-sensitives who’ve journeyed along with me, is the end- my Holy Grail of soap.